


The Soul Is Dead that Slumbers

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Drabble Sequence, Episode: S05e05 Ghost In The Machine, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-17 04:07:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1373353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a set of five Elizabeth-centric drabbles that explores what happens to her after we last see her in "Lifeline." Title taken from Longfellow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Soul Is Dead that Slumbers

Elizabeth feels no pain as her physical body is destroyed. This surprises her. She’s angry, yes, and afraid, but of the actual sensation of her body dying, she feels nothing. Dying is the worst kind of betrayal—her blood falling still in her veins, her lungs folding in on themselves like accordions, her skin cooling on the deck at Oberoth’s feet—while her consciousness, the incorporeal things that make her who she is, continues. Elizabeth watches herself gasp out a last breath, eyes rolling back in her head, and wonders how she will bear this divorce of flesh and spirit.

Elizabeth has always known how to hide—skinny girl with knobby knees, nothing to look at twice. People tend to underestimate her, a trend she’s put to good use at treaty tables in two galaxies. And here, hiding is so easy, the pulse of autonomy an alien rhythm, the desire for singularity so far outside the norm that very few Asurans even notice she is different. But Elizabeth is different—she does not think in ones and zeros and she cannot deny her humanity. So Elizabeth bides her time, the memory of Simon’s hands on her shoulders a phantom pain.

Elizabeth once thought that sound cannot exist in a vacuum, but space is loud. The fibers of the cosmos thrum constantly to a syncopation that hurts her wherever it touches. Elizabeth is spread thin, they all are—ghosts that haunt stars and nebulae and frozen moons. She floats, the wavelets of herself breaking against asteroids, against the hulls of derelict ships, against comet trails miles wide. The others drift alongside Elizabeth, mere microns and yet the expanse of universes between them. Elizabeth is a candle guttering in the black, a flame diffused across parsecs, a loneliness that cannot be contained.

Elizabeth wants too much, always has—peace in the Middle East, a path to Ascension, Atlantis—but this final want is the one she knows will break her. All these months and she’s never once wished for Earth, only a horizon of uninterrupted sea and the dawn breaking over a handful of spires. Elizabeth hears the quaver in Rodney’s voice, the guilt, the fear that he can never make things right. John won’t look at her and Teyla’s suspicion stings. And so Elizabeth is betrayed again, by those she would call family, by connections closer than bone, deeper than blood.

Elizabeth thinks as she closes her eyes that she’s died so many times, this latest death is nothing to fear. At least the void is quiet now. She would have liked to hold Torrin once, that precious life whose legacy will be of Athos and Earth, but that will never happen now. Nothing is certain or permanent; Elizabeth knows this better than most, and yet, she cannot hope. Elizabeth is tired of searching, of exile, of longing for what she can never have. Before her eyelids freeze shut, Elizabeth watches the Gate wink out, the last light of home extinguished.


End file.
